{{President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Zambias leader Michael Sata have been honoured by the UN’s World Tourism Organisation, when they signed an agreement in the no-man’s-land on Victoria Falls Bridge.}}<\/p>\n
The agreement will see the two countries co-host the UNWTO general assembly in August next year. <\/p>\n
It is not a formal position, although the UNWTO said Mugabe would receive an open letter like other heads of state who have joined its tourism campaign.<\/p>\n
Taleb Rifai, secretary general of UNWTO, said: “By coming here, it is recognition, an endorsement on Zimbabwe that it is a safe destination.”
\nHowever, the move has been criticised by political opponents.<\/p>\n
Kumbi Muchemwa, a spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said, “Mugabe is under international sanctions. How do you have an international tourism ambassador who can’t travel to other countries?
\nMugabe’s spokesman Rugare Gumbo said that the “situation on the ground in Zimbabwe is not as bad as portrayed”.<\/p>\n
Mugabe and his aides are subject to an EU travel ban that prevents him from travelling to EU countries. <\/p>\n
Navi Pillay, the UN human rights chief, last week urged Western countries to suspend sanctions against Mugabe and his close aides to give Zimbabwe a chance to implement much needed reforms.<\/p>\n
“I would urge those countries that are currently applying sanctions on Zimbabwe to suspend them, at least until the conduct of the elections and related reforms are clear,” she said in Harare after a five-day visit.<\/p>\n
“Sanctions should be entirely suspended for people to entirely focus on economic issues that need to be addressed.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Zambias leader Michael Sata have been honoured by the UN’s World Tourism Organisation, when they signed an agreement in the no-man’s-land on Victoria Falls Bridge.}} The agreement will see the two countries co-host the UNWTO general assembly in August next year. It is not a formal position, although the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tourism","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}